Gunmetal Green
by Eponymous Rose
Summary: After the defeat of the Meta, Blue Team adjusts to their new leader's command style. Which, y'know, would be a whole lot easier if a mysterious shadowy figure didn't keep trying to assassinate him. It's gonna be a long trip home. (Set during the stuff we didn't see in season 9.)
1. Chapter 1

"Are they stealing a _plane_?"

Tucker turns to see Wash staring into the distance with the slumped, defeated posture of somebody who's just accepted that his entire world has descended irrevocably into chaos. He also sees the Reds, balancing precariously on a UNSC Hornet, swerving and banking and being pursued by a frantic-sounding dude yelling about losing his job.

"Oh, yeah," Tucker says. "They do that a lot."

"They are very good at flying," Caboose says.

Wash shakes his head like he's trying to clear it. "I don't- they're _crashing_."

Tucker watches the Hornet clip a few trees before leveling off. He's pretty sure he can hear the screaming from here. "They do that a lot, too."

Wash is swaying a little on his feet again, so Tucker slaps him on the shoulder. "Starting to regret hanging out with us?"

"What do you mean, 'starting to'?" Wash says, deadpan. He looks over to his old armor, crumpled in the blood-streaked snow, and sighs. "But I guess I didn't really have a choice."

"You're welcome, asshole."

Wash puts a hand to his helmet's faceplate, wobbles again on his feet. Caboose shoots a sidelong look at Tucker that has all the subtlety of a neon sign flashing _CONCERN_, then asks, "Are you okay? Because I think if we are fast we could probably still catch up with Doc-"

"I'm fine," Wash says, in the melodramatic tone of voice that heroes use when they're trying to be strong in the face of overwhelming pain. Tucker winces. Great. He's one of _those_ guys. "My healing unit's dealing with it."

"Dude, I saw you when we peeled you out of that armor. You were pretty fucked up_._" Tucker makes a little grab for his elbow when he sways again, but Wash jerks violently away and, okay, holy fuck, the guy doesn't like to be touched, got it. "Look, here on Blue Team we have a time-honored tradition of screaming in agony when the situation demands it. You don't have to be all stoic-hero. That's fucking stupid."

Wash seems to focus on him, really focus, for the first time. "Tucker, right?"

Tucker's not quite sure how to respond to that, because it's like, yeah, pleased to meet you while you were kind of maybe trying to kill my best friend or whatever the fuck and now you're apparently a good guy or something. Charmed, I'm sure. "Yeah, I'm Tucker. You're Wash. Great, so your fuckin' memory's working. You want a gold star?"

"I'm Caboose," Caboose says, and flinches back when they both shoot a glare at him. "In... case... anyone was wondering."

"It's just that the others told stories about you," Wash says, cocking his head to one side, like he's measuring Tucker up. Tucker debates the merits of doing a pelvic thrust for style. "Didn't make the connection until just now. You're the one who had the whole Sangheili... thing. Aren't you?"

Tucker feels his shoulders tense, notices Caboose backing away in his peripheral vision. "Hey, fuck you. Junior's not a _thing_, okay."

Wash instantly holds up his hands. "No, no, I- I didn't mean that. I mean." He stops, starts again, more weakly. "Weren't you some sort of ambassador?"

Tucker watches him a minute to make sure he's not fucking around, then sighs and takes pity on the guy. "Yeah. Junior and I had some special assignments and shit. It was fucking boring. Lots of high-level diplomatic bullshit and bodyguards who wouldn't let me use my kickass sword. _So_ glad that's done. Those guys were fucking douchebags."

"Didn't everyone else on your team die in the desert?" Caboose asks, in a stage-whisper.

"Well, uh. Yeah. Okay. So that's not ideal, but I'm glad it's done. I'm a lover, not an interstellar envoy of peace. I just wanna get back to our bases and bullshit with Church for a while, you know?"

He pauses, because Caboose has jolted back from him, a full-body flinch, and then his own words register and he remembers the fucking memory unit, a piece of dead junk in the snow. Tucker can't really breathe for a second, and it's fucking stupid but he can't _breathe_. "I'm gonna go see if we can borrow a jeep," he mutters. "You're sure as fuck not gonna make it there on foot."

He storms off toward the nearest UNSC trooper, feeling Wash's stare on his back, steady as a laser-sight.

* * *

They're about five klicks away from the last of the ice and snow by the time Tucker feels like he can, y'know, actually breathe again. Wash is driving them along a precarious path carved into the side of a mountain, taking hairpin turns and steep inclines with a bored efficiency. It's kinda weird to be chauffeured around by somebody who can actually stay on the road, but any relief is offset by the fact that Caboose keeps up a steady stream of questions from the back seat: "Can we stop for a bathroom break? Can we stop to take a picture of that tree? Are we there yet? Are we there yet?"

Eventually Tucker figures maybe he's just trying to fill the silence which, to be fair, is getting really fucking awkward. So he clears his throat into the next conversational void and asks, "What's with the stripes?"

Wash only glances away from the road for a second, but it's enough to communicate his mingled confusion and relief that Caboose isn't the one asking questions anymore. "What?"

"The yellow stripes. Accents, whatever. On the armor. You know, the ones you fuckin' insisted we take the time to paint on while we were in a major hurry trying to save your sorry ass."

Wash's grip tightens on the steering wheel, but only for a moment. "I, uh. I'm not sure I really understand it myself. Back during Project Freelancer-" He pauses, clenches his hands again, then seems to push past some inner wall. "Our armor was... important. Maybe more than the Director ever realized. Someone important to me died for hers."

"That seems like a weird thing to die for," Caboose says, and Tucker would tell him to shut up, but he can't help sort of agreeing. "I like my armor, but it's, you know. Not as important as other things. Like naps."

"Yeah, well," Wash says, "weird or not, it happened. I needed the blue for it to be believable, but the accents are important. They help." He's tapping his fingers nervously against the steering wheel now, and Tucker's really starting to wonder about this whole last-minute plan thing, y'know, about basically handing their lives over to this guy who isn't exactly all there.

They make the next turn at a little more speed than usual, which Tucker figures is a clue that the conversation's over. They're cresting the peak of this mountain, coming up on a wooded area, and Tucker turns in his seat to watch the steep drop-off disappear behind them, the valleys beyond giving way to the ice fields. Somewhere out there, a bunch of UNSC assholes are picking over that armor of Wash's. Maybe they'll be smart enough to figure out that there's an artificial body in there instead of the real thing. Maybe all this bullshit isn't over yet.

He sighs, turns to face forward, and catches a glint of light out of the corner of his eye.

He whips back around, his hand already reaching automatically for his sword, and it takes him a second to consciously identify the glint in the undergrowth as the muzzle of a sniper rifle, and _fuck_, of course it was too fucking easy.

"Get down!" he snarls, shoving Wash, and then there's a jolt of pain that seems to come even before the deafening bang of the shot, but there's no time to take stock because a second shot blows out their left front tire and the jeep banks, shudders, and starts swerving back toward the cliff face. "Straighten us out! Straighten us out!"

"_I'm trying_!" Wash yelps, and Tucker just has time to marvel at how much he sounds like Church when his voice squeaks like that, before they're barrelling down the edge of the cliff, slamming into flatter outcroppings and jagged terrain along the way. For a few infinitely long seconds, Tucker's absolutely sure he's gonna die. Then he's kinda _hoping _he's gonna die because the jeep's picked up a spin and he really doesn't want to fucking puke in his helmet, that's gonna be a mess to clean up-

Eventually, the jeep skids right-side up, slams into the only fucking tree growing along the side of this fucking cliff, and comes to a screeching, groaning halt. Tucker's got his right hand in a death-grip on the jeep's door, and even with his armor compensating he feels the deceleration as a grinding _crack_ in his wrist. "Mother_fucker_," he gasps, yanking his arm away from the door and doubling over. For a few seconds there's no sound but the tinkle of broken glass settling and his own harsh breathing.

But his neck is itching really fucking badly, so Tucker slaps his good hand against the tickle, which promptly becomes a full-blown needle of pain, "Jesus, what the fuck!" He drags his hand away, staring blankly at the blood on his fingers, then realizes, right. Sniper. Asshole missed, but not by much.

"Tucker?" Caboose's voice behind him is soft, dazed, and Tucker doesn't want to think about how incredibly fucking relieved he is to hear that voice. "Are you okay?"

Tucker hunches over his wrist again, because apparently rocking back and forth really does help with excruciating pain. "Yeah, Caboose, fucking great. How about you, you all right?"

"I'm okay," Caboose says. "I- I don't think Wash is, though."

Tucker jolts, then turns to see Wash slumped over the dash of the jeep. He's not moving. "Oh, for fuck's sake," Tucker says, "I get shot and he's the one who's out cold again. Hey, c'mon, we've gotta get him out of here."

"Should we move him?" Caboose clambers out of the back seat—he really does seem to have made it out completely unscathed—and approaches Wash cautiously along the outcropping. "I always heard you're not supposed to move someone when they're hurt. Or... maybe that was about leaving baby birds you find on the ground."

"We don't have a fucking choice, okay? There was a sniper up there who took a shot at him, and down here we're sitting ducks."

"I knew it had something to do with birds," Caboose says, and stands by, watching as Tucker climbs gingerly out of the jeep.

"Okay," Tucker says, staring down at Wash. "We'll have to be careful, here." He reaches down with his good hand, gently pulls Wash away from the dash. There aren't any cracks in his faceplate or anything—the armor looks completely intact, yellow accents and all. Wash groans, pushing feebly against Tucker's arm, then slumps back again with a sigh. "Yeah, see? He's fine. C'mon, you're gonna have to carry him. My wrist's all fucked up."

"There's blood on your neck," Caboose whispers, like he's pointing out an awkward-looking mole or something.

"Yeah, I noticed," Tucker says, stepping back to try and get a good look up the edge of the cliff. "I can't see anything down here, but we're pretty close to the bottom. We can lose this sniper dickwad in the valley. Let's _go_, Caboose."

Caboose moves forward, drags Wash effortlessly out of the jeep—the guy's seriously just unbe-fucking-lievably strong—and manages to get him positioned with one arm draped around his shoulder and his toes dragging in the dirt. "Okay."

"Okay," Tucker says, and instinctively reaches for his sword with his right hand. "Ah, _fuck me_," he mutters, switching to a left-handed grip. The _swish_ of the sword activating still feels comforting, though, and he nods to signal Caboose to start down the path toward the valley.

They make it to the valley floor without catching any more sniper rounds, which is, y'know, definitely a win, but it's getting dark and Tucker's shoulderblades are itching just picturing someone watching them through an NVD, waiting for the right moment—

Wash makes a noise that sounds something like, "Mrrrgh," and Caboose stumbles to a halt. Tucker stops beside him, puts away his sword and leans forward to tap on Wash's helmet with his good hand. "Hey, are you alive in there or what?"

Wash gets his feet under him, pushes away from Caboose, then stumbles straight back into him. "Gn thrwp," he mutters.

"Yeah, well said. Look, we've gotta keep moving—"

"Gonna throw up," Wash says, more clearly, and barely yanks off his helmet in time, stumbling to his knees and retching.

Tucker winces, then passes him a pouch of water when he staggers back to his feet, clinging to a tree for support. "Thanks," Wash says, and, after spitting a couple times, downs the rest of the pouch all at once. There's a bruise already purpling on his forehead to go along with the impressive collection of scrapes he picked up squaring off against Tex and the Meta, and his eyes have a dull, unfocused look.

"You're concussed," Tucker says. "Great."

"Hey," Wash says, his gaze snapping up, "I'm not the one who shoved us off the road. What were you thinking? You could've gotten us all killed."

"_I _could've gotten us killed?" Tucker drags off his own helmet one-handed, turns his head to make sure the asshole can see the tear in his undersuit at the neck, the gash in the skin beneath. "That fucking sniper was aiming at you, shithead."

Wash blinks. "Sniper?"

"You didn't fucking notice? Someone took a shot at you! Why do you think I shoved you over?"

"I didn't see a sniper either," Caboose offers.

"_You_ have the observational skills of a fucking rock, dude," Tucker says, then rounds on Wash again. "That's twice in one fucking day we've saved your sorry ass."

Wash is sagging a little against the tree behind him. "I didn't ask you to do that," he says, sounding a little dazed. "I wouldn't have—"

"Yeah, well, wasn't my first choice either. Besides, it just skimmed me. Pretty much stopped bleeding already."

Wash just looks at him for a minute, his expression deepening into a scowl, then pushes off from the tree, fastening his helmet back in place. "It's almost dark. We'd better get moving. What's the plan?"

"Fuck if I know," Tucker says, donning his own helmet. "I was just trying to get us away from Snipey McGee up there."

Wash's strides are lengthening, his voice getting steadier. "Did you see anything that could help us identify this guy?"

"I don't even fucking know if it _was_ a guy. Might've been a chick. In which case, y'know, she can scope me out anytime."

Caboose jogs up to Tucker's side. "Hey chicka—"

Tucker glares. "No."

Wash is really, really good at exasperated sighs. When he sighs, it's like the whole fucking universe has disappointed him. "So we have nothing to go on."

"Well, who wants you dead?"

That earns him a fucked-up little laugh. "Do you have an hour?" He walks in silence for a moment, then adds, "I don't know if we should go back to Valhalla. They know we're headed that way. Could be waiting to ambush us."

"Yeah, no shit. You think it's the UNSC trying to get you back to jail?"

"With a bullet in my brain? Hah. No. Somehow I think they want me alive."

"It is very difficult to interrogate someone who is not alive," Caboose says, wisely.

"So what do we do?"

Wash glances back, and holy fuck, is that a glimmer of actual humor in his voice? "What, am I in charge now?"

Tucker starts crossing his arms, then remembers his bad wrist. "Do you have a plan? 'Cause I don't give a fuck who's in charge as long as we get out of here in one piece. And as long as it's not me in charge. I'm a lover, not a leader. _And_ as long as it's not Caboose."

"So you're saying I'm in charge."

"Yeah, by default. What do you want, a parade?"

Wash stares up into the foliage above them for a long moment, then looks back to Tucker and Caboose. "Okay," he says. "I say we keep going. I say we give this asshole exactly what he's looking for."

Stupidly stoic with a death wish. What a winning combination. "Dude, you didn't hit your head _that _hard."

"If it's not the UNSC after us, I bet this sniper's on his own out here. We can take him. Just need some sort of bait to draw him out. Think about it."

Tucker thinks about it. "That's the stupidest fucking plan I've ever heard in my life."

"It does seem like a bad idea," Caboose murmurs.

"See? Even _Caboose_ thinks it's terrible."

"Do you have a better plan?" Wash crosses his arms. "I thought I was in charge."

"Yeah, fuck that. You can be in charge of the killing-yourself team, and me and Caboose will take on the mantle of leading the actually-fucking-surviving team. Have fun with that."

Caboose perks up. "Wait, am I in charge now?"

"_No,_" Tucker and Wash blurt out, in unison.

Wash gives another sigh that's more of a groan, putting a hand to his head. "Well, what are we supposed to do, here? Just keep running forever and hope he gets tired? We've got to face him at some point. And I for one want to know what's going on."

"I really, really don't, though," Tucker says, and is vaguely aware that his voice is starting to rise. "Seriously! I don't give a fuck. I'm so fucking tired of all this Freelancer bullshit that if he came up right now and asked for you on a silver platter I might just say yes. Okay?" He regrets the words almost as soon as they come out of his mouth, but fuck it, he's hurt and he's fucking _tired_, y'know?

Wash is quiet for a long time, and then he says, very coldly, "Church always was good at looking out for his own skin. He obviously taught you guys well."

Tucker winds up to punch him, because _fuck that noise_, but he's completely forgotten about his fucking fucked-up wrist and ends up on the ground instead, cradling his arm and muttering a steady string of curses. Caboose is hovering, making worried noises, and fucking Wash is just standing a few feet away, watching him behind that fucking expressionless fucking helmet.

"What's wrong with your arm?" he asks, dead calm, like he's talking about the weather.

"Fucked it up in the crash," Tucker pants, and presses his helmet's faceplate into the grass, riding out the next wave of bone-grinding pain. "The fuck you care?"

There's a clatter of armor, and then a strangely warm green glow. The pain spikes, whiting out his vision and ramping his hearing up to a high whine, then starts to fade. He rolls onto his back to see a healing unit propped at his side, Wash crouched next to it.

"He saved my life with that once," Caboose says, proudly, and Tucker has to fight back a wave of confusion that's gonna make him blurt out something he'll regret, because how fucking much did he _miss_ while he was out there in the desert?

"Healing unit. You need it more than me right now. You should get a few hours of rest; sun's almost down anyway, and Caboose and I can keep watch. I should probably stay alert with this head injury anyway." Wash pauses, stiff, formal. "I'm... sorry about what I said."

"Fuck you," Tucker says, but his heart's not in it. He sighs, pulls off his helmet again and hikes himself up so his shoulders are propped against a fallen log. It's not comfortable by any stretch of the imagination, but the healing unit's blurring out the pain in his wrist and his brain's starting to feel like it's stuffed with wads of cotton, and maybe that'll be enough to let him rest, just _rest_. He sighs again, much longer this time. "Thanks. For the healing thing."

"Sure," Wash says. He sounds a little surprised.

Tucker's already drifting, but he's pretty sure he mumbles, "Don' worry, we're all fuckups here" before the darkness closes in.


	2. Chapter 2

Tucker's got a list he's been keeping of the sounds that are awesome to wake up to. You know, the shit you pretend you can hear first thing in the morning so you forget you're in a fucking war zone surrounded by assholes. Bacon sizzling in the kitchen. Someone's sleepy murmur beside you. Lazy-day rain drizzling off the roof. Your kid's little morning growls and yawns.

The earsplitting explosion of a fuckin' grenade doesn't exactly make the list.

It is an effective alarm clock, though, and he jolts awake with a yelp, fumbling for his sword. For a second, he can't work out why his wrist feels so stiff and clumsy—honestly, he has to have spent enough time, uh, building up strength in that wrist that it should have superpowers by now—and then the memories slam back into place. He coughs in the dust kicked up by the explosion, drags his helmet back on. The arm hurts, but it's definitely closer to healed than it was earlier. "Caboose! Wash!" His ears are ringing, his voice weird and muffled. It's still dark; he can't see anyone.

"_What?_ I can't hear you Tucker somebody exploded something!"

Okay, so Caboose is all right. Tucker heads toward the voice, sword at the ready in case another grenade gets thrown their way. He could probably cut it in half out of the air, right? That's a thing?

Wash comes up beside him so suddenly that Tucker swings his sword in a way that is not at all terrified flailing. "Tucker. What happened?"

Tucker takes a perverse pleasure in the fact that Wash is yelling, too. "Hey dude, I was fucking asleep. You were supposed to be on watch. Are we under attack? What the fuck?"

"If we were under attack, we'd probably be dead," Wash says. "The first grenade was a near-miss, but why stop there? No. This is something else." His voice has gone all gravelly and dramatic, and Tucker's pretty sure he's like one step away from pulling out a magnifying glass and hunting for clues. Wash stares off into the woods for a minute, battle rifle at the ready, then sighs, sounding almost disappointed.

"Do you hear something?" Caboose whispers. Caboose's whisper may just possibly be the loudest noise known to man.

Tucker squints into the night, pulling up some of the more complicated menus that came with his helmet's fancy-ass HUD upgrade. Nothing much on IR, but ambient temps are cold enough anyway that the exposed surfaces of a suit of armor would probably fade into the background, even without freaky stealth upgrades or whatever the fuck. "I got nothing," he says, after a moment. "Couldn't have picked a tropical spot to duke it out, huh?"

Wash gives a little half-shrug. "Then you've got moisture to contend with, and that messes with night-vision too. Keep an eye out."

"I think I hear something," Caboose says.

"Yeah, but there's a much higher probability of bikinis in a tropical locale," Tucker says. "Totally worth the trade-off."

Wash glances over. "You know, I still can't tell when you're being serious."

"Dude, I am always being serious when it comes to bikinis. Or, y'know, topless sunbathing."

"Um," says Caboose. "I really do hear something."

There's a loud crash in the underbrush, somewhere behind them, and Wash and Tucker whip around in unison. There's a flicker of light on the NVD, incredibly close, that looks an awful lot like the joints of a suit of armor, and then the very clear outline of a rifle, and okay, so maybe Tucker's not quite awake yet and Wash's fucking heroics are contagious or something, because he immediately lunges into the woods.

The guy's just straightening up, turning around, when Tucker's tackle catches him around the waist. They hit the ground hard, crashing through leaves and dead twigs and branches. The guy stays face-down, and Tucker straddles him awkwardly, reaching up with one hand to press his helmet into the dirt, keeping his sword at the ready with the other.

"-oh god oh god oh god-" The guy's whimpering, making no move to attack, waving his hands in a nervous show of surrender, and it takes Tucker a moment to see, in the faint light provided by the glow of his sword, that their mysterious attacker's armor is orange.

"What the _fuck_, Grif!" Tucker rolls off him, then kicks him once in the side for good measure.

"Ow!" Grif stumbles up to his knees, still waving his hands like he wants to make the surrender thing absolutely clear. His battle rifle is on the ground next to him. "Tucker? Are you trying to give me a fucking heart attack? What is wrong with you? Jesus fuck."

"What's wrong with _me_? Why did you throw a fucking grenade at us?"

Grif finally lowers his hands. "A grenade?"

Wash takes that opportunity to step out of the darkness, and okay, to be fair, he does look pretty terrifying fading out of the shadows all dramatically like that with his rifle at the ready. "Yeah," he says. "A grenade."

Grif jolts back violently, his surrender-type handwaving going into overdrive. "Whoa, whoa, whoa. I heard the explosion, but that wasn't me. I don't even have any fucking ammo for my rifle!"

Caboose makes his entrance next. It involves a lot less in the way of ominous fading out of the shadows and a lot more in the way of cheerful crashing through the underbrush. "Hey, Grif."

"Hey, Caboose."

Tucker scowls, waiting for his heartbeat to slow down to something a little less frantic, then reaches out and shoves the muzzle of Wash's rifle down toward the ground. "C'mon, man. Do you seriously think this guy orchestrated an attack on us?"

Wash backs up a step, snaps his rifle to the ready again. There's a new thread of anger in his voice that sets alarm bells ringing in Tucker's head. "I know I'm not willing to take chances right now. Neither of these attacks had any follow-through. Something's not right."

"Do you fuckin' listen to yourself? These idiots couldn't plan their way out of a paper bag. Grif, let me guess, you guys crash-landed your plane?"

"Hey," Grif says, "in my defense, Sarge got bored and started using me for target practice. I guess he forgot I was the one flying."

"Yeah, man, I can see why you're so worried. Military masterminds right here."

Wash is quiet for a moment, staring at Grif over his weapon, then asks, "Where's the rest of your team?"

Grif shrugs. "Don't get me started. Simmons claimed he had a great sense of direction, so we were following him back to Valhalla. I'm assuming we went the wrong way if you guys caught up with us, and also because, y'know. Simmons. Sarge assigned me to scout out ahead, and I figured I could sneak off, get some shut-eye. Next thing I know, there's some jerk setting off a big explosion, and then you fucking _assholes_ are tackling me!"

Wash moves up a step; Grif stumbles back. "Did you see who threw the grenade?"

"I dunno, man, it's dark! What do you want me to say? I just saw a shadow and got the fuck out of its way."

And Wash still isn't fucking lowering his rifle, so Tucker reaches out and shoves the muzzle down again. "Come on, dude, paranoid much? Calm down."

Again, Wash just moves back and brings his rifle to bear. "He could be working for the UNSC. I am not going back."

Caboose steps forward. "Please don't—"

"Shut up, Caboose," Wash says. Tucker feels a weird sort of chill at that, because like, it's okay if Tucker says it and it's okay if Church says it, but this? This is fucked up. And maybe this fucker traveled around with Caboose for a while, and maybe he got to know him a bit, but no, dude, this is fucked up.

"Yeah," Grif says, "I can see why you wanted to keep the crazy guy around. Good choice."

Wash's voice goes absolutely fucking cold, and he says, "I'm not crazy."

"Yeah, because that's a real convincing argument coming from a guy with a gun pointed at me for _no fucking reason_." And now Grif's getting angry, like seriously pissed off, which isn't really something Tucker thought he ever worked up the energy to do. "Did you kill Donut for no reason too? What, was his encyclopedic knowledge of musical theater too much of a fucking threat?"

This time, Tucker just steps between them, because fuck it, he's tired and his arm's starting to ache and the bullet graze on his neck's starting to sting and he just wants to sleep without having to scrub more blood out of his armor, y'know? He pushes the muzzle of Wash's rifle down one more time, holds it there, and is abruptly aware that this probably the single most dangerous fucking thing he's ever done in his life. Wash is breathing hard, and from this close Tucker can see his shoulders shaking.

"Hey," Tucker says, and it's fucking ridiculous, but all he can think about is the art of negotiating with big fuckin' aliens who sometimes want to rip his throat out. He's half-tempted to slip into Sangheili. It's surprisingly easy to project calm confidence in Sangheili. "It's okay. We're good. Nothing's happened yet that can't be fixed, but y'know, that's kinda gonna change if you shoot him. You've got a concussion, remember? You need to rest. We're gonna go meet up with the Reds. Safety in numbers."

Wash exhales, loudly, then jerks back and lowers his weapon to his side. "Fine," he says. "Okay."

Tucker glances back to Grif. "And you, just- just shut the fuck up, okay? Things are complicated right now. I'm coming in late, here. Still trying to figure out what the fuck's going on, you know?"

Grif's fists tense, then relax, slowly. "Tell me about it," he mutters.

"Okay," Tucker says. "So we're good?"

Grif bends down to snatch up his rifle. "Yeah," he says. "We're good. So long as you keep that asshole on a short leash."

To Tucker's surprise, Wash's only reaction is a snort of something that sounds suspiciously like laughter. Not, like, the most stable and well-adjusted laughter he's ever heard, but it's not exactly murderous either, so yeah. He'll take it.

As they stumble back into camp to grab the rest of their shit, watching warily for any sign of their fucking weirdo stalker who's apparently also the world's most underachieving assassin, Tucker hangs back a bit. Because, like, Caboose is just sort of staring at his feet while he walks. Dejected is kind of a weird look on him.

Tucker clears his throat. "You okay?"

"Yes," says Caboose, in a small voice, then adds, "No. I miss Church."

Tucker sighs. He's so fucking _tired_. "Yeah," he says. "Me too, buddy."

* * *

There's another round of yelling when they stomp into what passes for Red Base these days, but this time Wash hangs back and lets Tucker and Grif do the talking. Which, y'know. Leads to another extended negotiation about whether this constitutes a surrender, whether Oreos can be used as bargaining chips during said surrender, and whether Grif really needs all his limbs in working order for said surrender to be considered a success by all parties. By the time the bullshit terms and conditions have been established, Wash is swaying on his feet, Tucker's leaning on a tree for support, and Caboose has just straight-up wandered over to curl up on the ground and nap.

"Fifteen packages of Oreos once we get to Valhalla," Simmons says, with the defensive tone he gets when he's trying very hard to be professional despite, like, the entire rest of his team and all they stand for. "Don't forget."

"_And_ you have to each call Grif a demoralizing name in every single battle from here on in," Sarge says. "Twice would be a bonus."

"Excellent," Wash says. "Great. Are we done?"

"Hey, we're putting ourselves in danger here," Grif says. "No mysterious shadowy assholes are trying to kill _us_. Present company excepted."

There's a bit of a smile in Wash's voice. That's weird. "Fair point."

"Yeah, okay," Tucker says, because his head is just fucking _pounding_ at this point. "Fuck all of you. I'm getting some rest."

"I can take watch," Simmons says. "I only need like four hours of sleep anyway."

"Cyborg stuff?" Wash asks, with a genuine-sounding interest that surprises Tucker.

"Nah," Grif says. "He's just a nerd. All those late nights at computer camp-"

"_Programming_ camp." Simmons shrugs, looking uncomfortable. "And yeah, the cybernetics do something. I dunno. I get restless. Like I've got too much energy."

"Until he runs out of diesel," Sarge says, from where he's perched on a log polishing a shotgun.

Simmons whirls to face him. "Sir! You said the cybernetics ran on solar power! Entirely eco-friendly!"

"Uh," says Sarge. "Yeah, sure. That too. It's a complicated system, with the, er, whatsits having the thingummies. You know."

Grif sighs. "Honestly, Simmons, eco-friendly? Does that sound like something Sarge would do, like, ever?"

"I don't- wait. Were you injecting me with diesel oil _while I slept_?"

Tucker stifles a grin and casts a sidelong look at Wash, feeling a bit like a circus ringleader revealing a new exhibit: World's Weirdest Friends, one day only, step right up! But Wash is just sort of standing there, helmet under his arm, and he's got the faintest hint of a smile on his face. Like, an actual, honest-to-god smile. On him, it looks kind of dopey, and Tucker has to fight back a weird surge of... what? Jealousy? Disappointment at being cheated out of yet another of Wash's patented eyeroll-and-sigh fests?

Or maybe, y'know, frustration at finding one more fucking thing that he missed while he was gone in the desert? Wash actually kinda getting to know these guys. Wash actually kinda getting to like them.

Sarge has started in on Grif, and Simmons is laughing a bit too loudly, high and nervous, and Wash is just sort of standing there, part of it and not quite part of it, and all of a sudden Tucker feels like he just needs to get the fuck out of there. He glances over at Caboose, sprawled fast asleep in full armor toward the edge of their little clearing, and stomps away from the rest of them to go flop down beside him. Caboose snores incredibly loudly, but like, it's a familiar sort of sound by now. Honest, y'know? No wary smiles or weird fucking mood swings. Just Caboose being a dumbass.

Tucker drags off his helmet and curls onto his side, facing away from the others, Caboose at his back, and sinks into a muddled, confused dream about assassins and ghosts, and through it all he thinks he can still feel the muzzle of a battle rifle against the palm of his hand.


	3. Chapter 3

Tucker wakes up feeling like absolute shit, his head throbbing, his jaw clenched to the point of aching. The first thing he notices is the torrential rain, the salt-water taste on his lips. The second thing he notices is Wash standing over him, in full armor, nudging him in the side with the toe of his boot. Tucker swats him away, muttering a curse and scrubbing sleep from his eyes.

"You were yelling in your sleep," Wash says. "Thought I should maybe wake you up."

Tucker stares at him for a second, but the nightmare's already a dull haze in his memory, all wrapped up in the tension of his shoulders, the way his breath keeps catching. "Thanks," he says, dragging on his helmet. It's damp and cold on the inside, because of fucking course it is. Wash just shrugs, and Tucker figures maybe that dude knows a thing or two about nightmares.

When Tucker rolls to his feet, there's mud squelching beneath him, smearing on his armor. Which is, y'know. Just great. He glances over to where Caboose is still snoring happily away, then beyond him to the Reds, who are packing up camp with a surprisingly quiet efficiency. He catches Simmons glancing furtively his way. Wonders just how loud he was yelling. "We heading out?"

"Apparently. I guess the plan is to continue on to Valhalla, see if we get another shot at this guy."

Tucker snorts, shaking off the lingering grogginess, rolling his shoulders. "Yeah. Some plan."

Wash ignores that, folding his arms across his chest. "How's the wrist?"

Remembering, Tucker rolls it a couple times, experimentally. "I... think it's making a clicking sound? So yeah, it's probably still fucked up. How's the head?"

"Probably still fucked up," Wash says, deadpan, and Tucker vents a startled laugh before he can stop himself.

Caboose chooses that moment to wander back to consciousness, rolling to his feet with way too fucking much energy. "Morning, Tucker. Morning, Agent Washingchurch."

"Morning," Wash says, and Tucker's not a hundred percent sure, but he thinks there's a bit of wariness there. Wash hesitates for a moment, then holds up a pair of shitty-looking rat bars and tosses one to each of them. "Breakfast. Such as it is. We should probably save the MREs until we've got a better idea of how long we're gonna be out here."

Tucker squints at his bar, even as Caboose yanks off his helmet and tears into his own. There's an expiration date on it that he really wishes he hadn't read. "Uh," he says. "Are you trying to kill us, too?"

"Hey, Blues!" Sarge bellows. "If you're done with your little tea party, we should probably get this show on the road."

"You're the ones dragging your heels." Wash straightens up, his voice steady and confident, and holy fuck, is he trying to show off to _Sarge_? "We're ready whenever you are."

"I should probably use the bathroom before we go," Caboose stage-whispers. Tucker's torn between rolling his eyes and being really fucking grateful that _someone_ brought it up, because the rain's starting to, like, drip. Suggestively. From every fucking tree branch.

Wash stares at him, and even with his helmet on Tucker can tell he's getting that oh-my-god-what-am-I-doing-here look on his face. "Yeah, okay. We'll, uh. Be there in a minute."

* * *

Going on a muddy hike through the woods with a bunch of his mortal enemies is pretty great. Seriously. Tucker could do this all fuckin' day.

"Oh my _god_ this sucks," Grif moans, stumbling along beside him.

"Ugggh," Tucker says, keeping up his end of the scintillating conversation. They've been pulling up the rear for the last mile or so, and honestly it's kind of nice to have someone to bitch with. All things considered, Grif's not that bad, for a Red. And, y'know. Anyone related to Sister can't be a complete dumbass. "I kinda want this dickwad to take another shot at us, put us out of our misery."

Grif glances over at him. "Yeah, I was gonna ask. What the fuck is up with this assassination stuff?"

Tucker shrugs. "Someone's trying to kill Wash. I get the feeling it happens a lot."

"Seriously, man, you gotta start paying attention to the people you hang out with. That dude's trouble." Grif's laconic tone shifts again toward something a bit darker. "I don't know why you didn't just leave him back there, on ice. Let him be someone else's problem."

Tucker shrugs again. "I don't know. You sounded pretty pissed at him last night. Why are you dumbasses acting like you're okay with him now, after what he did to your guys?"

Grif sighs, rubbing at the back of his neck. "Fuck if I know. Easier to act like it didn't happen. Pretend like everything's normal. There's a lot of bullshit that gets hard to take if you think about it too much."

"Yeah," Tucker says. "Yeah, I get that."

"Huh," says Grif, then adds, "Hey, you've got something on your neck."

Tucker reaches up, touches the graze from the sniper's bullet—the healing unit patched it up pretty quick, but there's still dried blood that comes away tacky under his fingertips. "Near miss," he says.

"Shit."

"Pretty much."

They trudge on in silence. It's so boring that Tucker's actually getting sucked into following the incredibly fucking dull conversation Sarge and Simmons are having about org charts and staff meetings. Like, holy fuck. Are they gonna go with a flowchart or a set of bullet-points? What font will they use? Man, he's on the edge of his fucking seat.

Wash, up toward the front of their procession, has been talking to Caboose in a low-voiced tone for most of the day. Which is kind of weird, but, y'know. He might just be answering Caboose's endless array of questions as penance for snapping at him yesterday or whatever. Either way, Caboose seems happy enough, bounding through the mud like a fuckin' puppy or something. So, not that it matters, not really, but that's one thing that's kinda going back to normal.

Which is, of course, when the fucking gunshot rings out.

Tucker's half-bent over, trying to extricate the greaves of his armor from a particularly clingy tree branch, so he's got a perfect view of the sniper round punching into said tree, sending wood chips flying at his visor. "Mother_fucker_," he yelps, wheeling back, and then Wash is just sort of _there_, rifle at the ready, planting himself in front of Tucker, and the second shot never comes, it just never fucking comes.

"Tucker!" Caboose yelps, and Sarge says something ridiculous that sounds like, "Holy turnips and jelly!" which can't possibly be right, and Grif is still in full retreat, stumbling over his own feet, and Simmons is shouting panicked requests for orders, and all Tucker can do is just sort of stare stupidly at Wash's back while he glowers down the scope of his battle rifle, tense and wary.

"I don't get it," Wash murmurs, after a long moment. "I've got nothing on trackers. He's gone again."

Tucker finally manages to drag himself free of the tree, brushes two fingers against the chipped-away bark. "Yeah, well," he says, trying to ignore the way his voice shakes, "he's a lousy fucking shot if he was aiming at you."

Wash glances back at him. "Yeah," he says, with some significance. Grif surreptitiously sidles a few more steps away from them.

"What, you think this asshole's aiming at me?" And okay, yeah, his voice is climbing a little, but it's totally fucking understandable under the circumstances. "Why the fuck would he do that?"

"Um," says Simmons, "sorry, but weren't you some kind of Sangheili ambassador? That sounds important enough to assassinate."

"Fuck you!" Tucker yelps. "I'm not important! I just had that dumb job for a little while, okay? On account of Junior and all that." He sways as another thought hits him. "Whoa, what about Junior? If someone's after me, could they be-"

"I doubt it," Wash says, very cool, very calm. Right now Tucker wants to punch him right in his cool, calm face. "He's with other Elites, right? Not exactly an easy target."

"Fuck you, you don't know that! People have been fucking dying over this shit, okay? They just- we just-" Tucker's fucking hyperventilating now, so he forces himself to stop and take a deep breath. He's right. Wash is fucking right. Junior's off doing his thing with the other side of the family, and those dudes have some seriously big guns. In comparison, Tucker with his shitty little sword and fucked-up ex-Freelancer buddy isn't exactly a threat. Yeah. And about that fucked-up ex-Freelancer...

Tucker focuses on Wash for the first time. "Wait. Did you just, like, jump heroically in front of me?"

"I was assessing the threat," Wash says, reasonably and maybe a little bit too quickly.

Tucker has a joke on the tip of his tongue about assholes with death wishes, but maybe that one's gonna hit a bit too close to home, so he shuts up, rubs at the dried blood on his neck, and opens his mouth to say something else-

"Get _down_," bellows a voice Tucker's never heard before. Like, Simmons can get pretty high-pitched in a pinch, but this isn't terrified falsetto, this is a woman's voice, confident and in charge and very, very used to giving orders.

For a split-second, Tucker's convinced it's Tex, but then he remembers seeing the faceplate of her helmet shattered in the snow, and that whole thing was pretty fucked up all around, so like, it's probably not her, but who the fuck...?

Before his train of thought can find its way to the station, he's already obeying the mystery voice and flattening himself on the ground. There's another gunshot, and his whole body jerks before he realizes he's not hit, that it's just another near-miss.

Wash isn't going prone. He's standing. He stumbles. He's close enough that Tucker can hear his breathing hitch, and then he just sort of sighs, like he's really fucking tired. Tucker knows the feeling. He scrambles to his feet, reaches out in time to steady Wash when he sways, and it takes his brain a second to catch up, to hone in on the fact that there's some red mixed in with the rain streaming down Wash's armor, to realize that yeah, okay, Wash is fucking _shot,_ because of fucking course he is.

"Um," Wash says, and then his legs give out and Tucker is left awkwardly trying to fumble between holding him up and helping him to the ground. He settles on sort of stumbling back onto his haunches, lowering Wash onto the grass. There's blood streaming out from under his chestplate, but Wash is still moving, coughing. There's a weird doubling in Tucker's vision, seeing the blood on Wash's armor. Church's armor.

"Hey," Tucker calls, finding his voice at last. "Hey, is that fucker still out there?"

"I don't see anyone," Caboose says. He sounds very small and scared.

"Looks clear," Sarge says, grimly.

"Okay," Tucker says, fumbling for armor clasps, pausing to drag off Wash's helmet, and then pausing again, looking at Wash's face. He seems confused more than anything, and when he opens his mouth to speak there's blood staining his teeth pink. "You shut the fuck up," Tucker tells him, fumbling for the asshole's emergency aid kit, hoping the fucking biofoam didn't get used up during the fight with the Meta, hoping the fucking healing unit's doing its thing. Wash's eyes track his movements. "Stop moving, dumbass. Okay. Grif, can you-"

He half-turns, and then he has a confused moment where he's pretty sure he's seeing double again, because one Grif is still hanging back as far from the action as possible, and the other is wearing a weird helmet and crouching right at his elbow. Tucker blinks, reaches for his sword, and then there's a fist in his face and a flat palm to his solar plexus, and it's like being hit by a fucking _truck_. He falls back, gasping, and the not-Grif's armor fades from orange into blue-green, and for a dazed second all he can think is that hey, now there's two of _him_.

Then the armored figure leans over Wash, and it's just like, okay, oh-fucking-kay, that is not gonna happen, not in the middle of all this bullshit, not after _Church-_

Tucker's still wheezing but he's got enough strength to stumble to his feet, and it's not so much a tackle as it is a controlled fall, but he catches the asshole off-guard, drags him to the ground, and then Caboose is storming into the fray, pinning the guy down, and Sarge strides in with his shotgun at the ready, and Tucker finally manages to take a deep enough breath to yell, "Don't shoot!" because there's something wrong here, there's something seriously fucked up.

"I'm trying to help Wash," the armored figure says, and fuck, it's the same chick's voice as before. She opens her empty hands. She's really, really calm. Scarily calm. "Let me up. I know him."

"See, that's not exactly reassuring if you know the kind of company this guy keeps," Sarge says, cocking his shotgun.

The woman sighs, and Tucker just has time to register the new tension in her legs before she's kicking out at Sarge, shoving his shotgun out of range even as she twists under Caboose's grip, sending him careening forward into Tucker. In the next second, she's executing a flawless clearing kick, stumbling out from under the new dogpile, bouncing back on the balls of her feet. Grif and Simmons, hanging back with their battle rifles at the ready, just sort of glance at each other, their aim wavering.

Her hands are still out in front of her, palm-out. No weapons. Which is, y'know. Totally a good thing. For her. Because, like, as soon as Tucker can breathe again he's totally gonna be back on his feet and doing swishy sword stuff and she's not gonna stand a chance.

"I'm not trying to hurt you," she says, again with the calm voice, although there's maybe the faintest underlying layer of irritation there. "I'm just trying to check on Wash, okay?"

"You are a very scary lady," Caboose says, softly.

"You... punched me... in the face," Tucker wheezes.

"Helmet," she says. "And you were reaching for a weapon. Now, are you idiots going to let me look at him or not?"

"You're not the one who was shooting at us," Simmons says, slowly, and everyone turns to look at him. "Right? You've been trying to help."

It's like watching a fucking tennis match; everyone turns around in unison to stare at scary magic-armor lady again. She just gives a sort of half-shrug. "Not doing a very good job of it. I figured I'd have a better chance at taking this guy out on my own, while he was distracted with you. He's just one guy, but he's got some sort of spec-ops stealth tech—I can't track him. But I-"

She pauses, turning to look down at Wash, and gives another little shrug.

"You're a Freelancer," Tucker says, managing at last to get out a full sentence without gasping for air. "You're another fucking Freelancer. I thought all you assholes were dead or in jail."

She gives a twisted little laugh that reminds Tucker way too fucking much of Wash. "Not for lack of trying. I'm-" And she pauses, like she's trying to call up a memory gone old and rusty. "-Carolina. You idiots keep an eye out—I think I scared the guy off, but he might be back for another shot."

Raising her hands again, for emphasis, she crouches down beside Wash. Tucker scrambles up to his other side. Wash is breathing fast and shallow, his eyes flickering shut. Tucker's known him for, what, a couple of days, and he's already really fucking sick of seeing him like this.

"Hey," Tucker says, hoping his voice doesn't sound as small and pathetic as he thinks it does. "Is he gonna be all right?"

Carolina has paused midway through removing his chestplate, staring down at her hands and the blood on them. "He's got a Freelancer healing unit," she says, dully.

"The green glowy thing?" Caboose says. He's hanging back a little, but Tucker's weirdly grateful for his looming presence. "Yeah, he helped me with it once."

She sort of shakes her head, like she's waking herself up, and then she pulls away Wash's chestplate, sets it aside. It looks bad, but not as bad as Tucker was expecting. He's been hit in the chest, but there's already a faint green glow surrounding it, and even as Carolina peels back Wash's undersuit Tucker can tell the edges of the wound are beginning to heal. He can't imagine what sort of shit is going on under the skin.

Carolina applies biofoam and a pressure bandage, then leans back, cocking her head to the side. "Wash?" Her voice has gone soft, cautious. Her fingers twitch, like she's holding herself back from reaching out to him. "You still with us?"

Wash's eyelids flicker open again, his brow furrowing, and then his wandering gaze focuses on Carolina. And it's fucked up, but Tucker can pinpoint the exact moment when Wash recognizes her, because his face immediately goes gray, and he sucks in a long inhalation, like you do when you're in a nightmare and you're trying to wake yourself up, trying to scream. He coughs, pushes himself up on his elbows, gasping, scrabbling back, and he wheezes something that sounds like, "But you're _dead_," and then Tucker's trying to push him down, suppressing his own panic, because _what the fuck_, and Wash just keeps pushing back, staring at Carolina with wide eyes, and he manages to gasp out, "You didn't die? You left? You left me there with-"

"Shut the fuck up," Tucker says, frantically pushing Wash down. "Just lie still, you dumbass. What the fuck?"

Wash finally sinks back, coughing, but his gaze is still riveted on Carolina, and she's just kinda staring down at him, again with the eerie calm, _what the fuck_. And when Wash speaks again, it's in a weird little fucked-up voice, like he's desperately hoping he's just woken up from a very, very long nightmare.

"_Boss_?"


	4. Chapter 4

Wash passes out for, like, a day and a half. Carolina just sort of hangs around, waiting for him to wake up. It's really fucking awkward.

The Reds keep talking about moving on, like they're gonna just leave Blue Team alone with their existential crisis, but Carolina's got this _thing_ she does with her helmet where she manages to convey disdain and threat just by tilting her head? Yeah, it's fucking terrifying. So the Reds stick around, and Carolina keeps watch and apparently never fucking sleeps.

So. Fucking. Awkward.

At one point, Tucker wanders over to try engaging her in conversation, brings her a shitty ration bar. You know. Hardcore flirting stuff. She just does the helmet-tilt thing, ignoring the proffered snack.

"Yeah," Tucker says, leaning casually against a nearby tree trunk, determined to be cool and not even slightly terrified. "I get it. Food here's not great. I wouldn't eat it either. And, hey, speaking of food, you know of any good restaurants around here where I could show you the night of your life?"

Carolina stares. "We're in a forest, being hunted by a hired killer."

"I'm sure there are some online reviews we can check out, first. Make sure the place is reputable, y'know?"

Carolina stares some more. "What the hell is wrong with you?"

Tucker pulls off his helmet to bestow upon her the full force of his charming grin. "Not a single thing."

Carolina launches into a stirring rendition of Disapproving Staring, Act Three: Once More With Feeling.

Tucker sighs, pulling his helmet back on. "Church always did have the worst fucking circle of friends."

In the time it takes him to pull his helmet back on, Carolina has moved so she's standing practically nose-to-nose with him. The proximity is, well, almost embarrassingly hot. It's been a long time, okay?

But her voice is low, and not in a good way. "What did you say?"

He blinks, digging through his reeling mind for the memory. "Dinner?"

She brings up her forearm, jams it into his throat, pins him to the tree in one smooth motion. "Try again," she says, and yeah, this is absolutely terrifying and maybe just a tiny bit arousing, but fuck, he's out of sight of the others and something in her stance makes him think she's almost finished with her last cup of sanity for the day.

"Church!" he yelps. "I was just saying Church has this thing for, y'know. Strong women? I mean, not that I don't. I mean, like this thing we're doing now? This is really, you know. Really nice. Sort of. I mean, dinner would be nicer. I'm not so much into the rough stuff. But I could be! Maybe! Let's not rule anything out, here. N-not that I'm inexperienced! I just, uh. Haven't really. Done much. Um."

She stares at him until he winds down, then relaxes her push on his throat and takes a step back. "Church," she says, in a tone of slow realization. "You're talking about Epsilon, aren't you?"

"Uh," says Tucker, rubbing at his throat. "Yeah. I guess. I didn't really follow all that geeky AI shit."

She exhales, slowly. "Right."

"He was my friend," Tucker adds, a little defensively.

Carolina tilts her head to the side, not in the scary way, just like she's thinking about something she hadn't really considered before. "Huh," she says. "I've got a deal for you guys. I could use the extra manpower."

"I bet you could." Tucker attempts a particularly advanced maneuver—the under-helmet eyebrow waggle. Very difficult to pull off successfully due to visibility restriction.

Okay, no, _that's_ the scary head-tilt again. Scratch that approach. "Uh," he says, trying to drag his higher brain functions back online by sheer force of will. "No way. Sounds to me like you're looking for cannon fodder. I know how you Freelancer assholes operate."

"Hey," she says, "I could walk away right now. I wanted to talk to Wash if I could, but I can always do this without him. Just let you deal with your little assassin problem alone."

And, okay, she's feeling talkative for once. Might as well roll with it. "Yeah, so what's with that, anyway? Some dude's seriously trying to kill me because of my stupid job?"

Carolina shrugs. "You ever serve during the war? Apart from your little simulations."

Tucker stares down at his feet, digging his toe into the mud. At least the fucking rain's let up. "Fuck, I don't even really know anymore. I guess not. I signed on as soon as I was old enough, y'know? Flunked the fucking tests, got sent out to Blood Gulch. And then the stuff with Junior came up, and it was like, okay sure, yeah, I'll be the ambassador to whatever the fuck. Special training, bullshit like that."

"Right," Carolina says. "So you weren't on the front lines."

Tucker glances up at her, sharply. "You were? I thought you were with Project Freelancer."

"I did a lot of things," Carolina says, airily. Great. Turns out all the fucking Freelancers have the same flair for the dramatic. "What I'm saying is that a lot of really bad things happened out there. And you and your kid became a pretty visible pair of faces for the reconciliation. Not everyone's gonna be happy with that."

Tucker pulls out the hilt of his sword, doesn't activate it or anything, just rolls it around in his palms to give his hands something to do. "Yeah, well, that's their problem. I don't do that bullshit anymore. No reason to kill me over it. Or, y'know. Hurt my friends just because they happen to be standing near me."

Carolina tenses a little at that. "Yeah," she says. "Well, tell that to the guy with the sniper rifle."

"Wyoming tried to kill me once," Tucker says, then immediately regrets it, because hey, what if Wyoming was like Carolina's best Freelancer buddy or something? Awkward.

"I know," Carolina says, which isn't exactly reassuring. "Listen. My deal's this: I help you take care of this assassin, you help me rescue Epsilon."

Tucker stares at her, because the words aren't quite making sense. She stares back for a moment, then adds, "Hello?" like she's not quite sure he's capable of understanding the English language unless she speaks very, very slowly and clearly.

Tucker thinks for a moment, because, like, there's something really important here that his brain's just not quite latching on to. "Um," he says.

She tilts her head to the side.

"Church," he says, hating the way his voice comes out all weird and broken. "He's dead. The Epsilon unit's broken."

He can hear the smirk in her voice. He kinda hates her for it. "I can fix it."

"Wh-" Tucker shakes his head to clear it, because his heartbeat's suddenly way too fucking loud in his ears. "What do you want with Church, anyway?"

"I need his help," Carolina says, simply.

Tucker feels a weird chill go down his back, tries the idea on for size. Church is alive. Church is fucking alive. _Let's fucking do this_, he thinks.

"Who the fuck _are_ you?" he says, instead.

She shrugs. "Carolina."

"Yeah, no shit. I mean, who are you to this guy?" He jerks a thumb toward where Wash is actually out of his fucking armor for once, lying in the green glow of the regen unit. "Were you guys, like, fuckbuddies or what?"

That actually makes her jolt back from him in surprise, and he wonders if that's the first genuine reaction he's seen from her yet. "No," she says. "We worked together."

Tucker shrugs. "No rule saying you can't fuck the people you work with."

"Um," she says, and she's getting the tone in her voice that Wash sometimes gets when he's coming to the slow realization that his world is sinking irrevocably into insanity. Tucker likes that tone. It's weirdly comforting. "He was part of my team." She pauses. "Why? Are you...?"

Tucker stares at her for, like, a minute before his brain finally clocks over. "Oh! Uh. We just met, actually. Like two days ago." Which, his brain supplies helpfully, isn't exactly a 'no'. He tells his helpful brain to shut the fuck up. "Look, lady, he's out cold and I'm just trying to figure out if him freaking out when he saw you was a sign that maybe we shouldn't trust you. Just a hunch."

She shrugs, but it's not casual. Sort of, like, uncomfortable. "I let him down. I guess I let a lot of people down."

"Join the club," Tucker says. It almost comes out as a joke.

Carolina just sort of crosses her arms and looks at him, like she's sizing him up, trying to place him somewhere on a scale from 'useful' to 'possibly dumber than mold'. Then she says, in a voice that's trying a little too hard to be disinterested, "Is he... doing okay?"

Tucker guffaws. "Dude, that guy is about as far from okay as it's humanly possible to get." But even as he's talking, he's thinking about that moment when Wash was just sort of watching the Reds bicker with a genuine, goofy-looking smile on his face. "I dunno. I think he might get there eventually."

"Huh," she says. "Good for him. Think about the deal, kid. I'll think about keeping you alive." And then she drops Tucker from her attention, just turns back to keeping watch for whatever-the-fuck's out there in the woods with an absolutely single-minded intensity. Tucker's pretty sure he could spontaneously combust right now and she wouldn't even notice. She'd, like, make some dry comment about unseasonably warm temperatures or something. Harsh.

So he slinks back to camp, lets himself get suckered into an argument with Sarge over whether Wash's healing unit could be improved with some sort of mounted weaponry—"Just think! You could be down and out and your mechanical medic would keep your enemies on the run!"—and eventually wanders over to check on Wash because, like, not one of them has any decent medical training, apart from Sarge's whatever-the-fuck, and he's pretty sure you're supposed to check on people recovering from bullet wounds to the chest. He's just not entirely sure what you're supposed to be checking _for_. Breathing, probably?

Wash is breathing. He looks weird without the power armor—the undersuit is black Kevlar that tends to make anyone look like they're about to secretly rob a bank or something, but on Wash it just makes him look small.

Caboose is crouched next to Wash, and Tucker's just starting to wonder if keeping the team-killing dumbass right next to the injured dude is such a good idea when Caboose speaks up. "I think he's doing better. He's breathing okay."

Tucker feels a flash of embarrassment, because hey, that's pretty much exactly what he was just thinking. Great. So he's officially reached Caboose levels of medical expertise. "Yeah, no shit."

He keeps looking down at Wash's face, though, because like, he's seen it before a couple times, but he's never really _looked_, y'know? Wash has black hair, but fucking blond roots, and when the fuck did this guy have time to dye his hair? Wandering through the desert with the Meta and Doc? _Hey guys, hold up, this is important—my roots are coming in. _And, like, the guy's got some kickass scars Tucker never really noticed before. One eyebrow's split down the middle, the scar shockingly white against the darker skin behind it. And there's a weird sort of sunburst pattern of scarring on his forehead, tracing back through his hairline, that makes Tucker think of the time he accidentally fell through a plate glass window as a kid. Same sort of pattern—shattering glass. Only, y'know. On the guy's forehead.

Tucker thinks about that for a second and kinda flinches back, because it's like even _looking_ at this guy too closely is some fucking invasion of privacy, like he's carrying so much shittiness around that it's burned into his fucking skin for the whole goddamn world to see.

Caboose leans back on his haunches. "I think I am starting to like Mr. Agent Washington."

"Yeah, man," Tucker says, and heaves a sigh. "I think he kinda grows on you."

* * *

The next morning, Tucker drags himself out of a confused nightmare to see Carolina leaning over Wash, deep in whispered conversation. So either she's gone completely nuts or Wash is finally awake. Either one might be entertaining. After taking a piss and wolfing down the last of yesterday's rat bar, Tucker wanders over to see what's up.

"-not _complete_ idiots," Wash is murmuring.

It's a pretty great opening line, so Tucker takes the opportunity to jump into the conversation. "Nah, we're too lazy to pull off being complete idiots. Too much work. We'll settle for partial idiocy any day."

Wash rolls his eyes, but there's a faint smile pulling at his lips.

Carolina glances at Tucker, then straightens up and mutters something about going to look for the Reds. Tucker makes sure to give her some space to walk around him. Not that he's scared of her. Just, y'know. Courteous.

Tucker turns to watch her leave, then bends down beside Wash. "Uh," he says. "You okay?"

"Well, you know. I've been shot," Wash deadpans.

"Yeah, genius, I noticed. That's basically your default state. I mean, are you okay with this Carolina chick? What the fuck is going on with her? You were totally freaking out before."

The half-assed smile drains from Wash's face entirely. "Carolina's always been driven, and this is personal. For both of us. It's complicated."

"No shit. But I figure we kinda deserve to know what's up. Especially if her big plan involves using us as canon fodder."

And all of a sudden Wash isn't meeting Tucker's eyes, his gaze fixed on a point somewhere over Tucker's left shoulder. "Trust me. I won't let that happen."

"Um," says Tucker, because what the fuck do you say to that? "Glad to hear it. Hey, uh. About the whole getting-shot thing..."

Wash waves a hand in a motion evoking a shrug. "Like you said, it happens. Nobody saw it coming. I'm fine."

Tucker just sort of stares at him, because that's bullshit. Doesn't say, _Yeah, but Carolina yelled out a warning. _Doesn't say, _Yeah, but I have shitty reflexes and I still had time to get down. _Doesn't say, _Yeah, but you could've dodged that bullet, you could've moved out of the way. Yeah, but you could've ducked._

_Yeah, but you didn't_.

Fucking self-destructive _jackass_. Tucker huffs an annoyed breath, dragging himself back to his feet. "You gonna lie around again all day today, or-?"

Wash grunts. "Help me up."

Tucker's half-tempted to wait for Caboose to wake up and make him do it, but y'know. He's wearing power armor. Wash isn't that heavy. With a minimum of effort, he manages to set Wash on his feet, then sort of hangs back and watches the guy turn a variety of interesting colors, swaying on his feet. "You good?"

"Yeah," Wash mumbles, half doubled-over with one hand clenched into a fist at his chest. From this angle, Tucker can see the exit wound in his back. He thinks it's kinda fucked up that a single bullet can scar you twice. "Where are the others?"

"The Reds're scouting out ahead, I guess," Tucker says. Shortly after he woke up, Sarge had stomped off muttering something about a mission vital to the safety of humanity, but Grif had looked bored and Simmons had looked vaguely embarrassed, so it probably wasn't anything too big. "Caboose is sleeping."

Wash is breathing a little easier, straightening up slowly, like he's testing himself. "Okay," he says. "We just need to-"

A shot rings out, distant and echoing. Tucker is getting _really fucking tired _of flinching at the sound of gunfire, although he's slightly mollified by the fact that Wash jumps as well, his hand coming up again to his chest. This time, neither of them is shot, which is, like, a huge fucking step up from the last few days. Go Blue Team.

There's a low roar that sounds an awful lot like Sarge yelling at somebody, and then Caboose pops up at Tucker's elbow. He's in full armor, including his helmet, but is holding three toothbrushes. Tucker's basically just stopped asking about the toothbrushes.

"Tucker! Washingtub! You're not dead!"

Once again, Tucker's thought processes are basically identical to Caboose's. He's starting to think he should get that checked out. "Yeah, nice observation there, buddy. Stay with Wash a minute, okay? I'm gonna go check this out."

"That doesn't seem-" Wash says, but Tucker's a lot faster than him right now, so fuck it, he sprints off into the woods. His HUD's already picking up heat signatures, but there are five, not four. The Reds, plus Carolina, plus... whoever the fuck.

He stumbles into the clearing, belatedly whipping out his sword ("Swish!"), and stops short.

It's a really fucking weird scene to blunder into. Sarge is sitting on the ground, knees drawn up to his chest, and he's biting out a curse as Grif nervously smears what looks like an entire tube of biofoam into a bullet wound in his back. Simmons looks about a billion times more nervous, somehow, and has his battle rifle raised and at the ready. For a second, Tucker thinks he's pointing his rifle at Carolina, which would be like, holy shit, he had no idea Simmons had such a death-wish. But in the next second Tucker realizes Carolina's got some scrawny dude wearing power armor in a headlock, and that he's the real threat Simmons is targeting. There's a sniper rifle on the ground a few feet away.

"Uh," says Tucker. Casual. Keep it casual. "What's up, guys?"

Sarge perks up, shrugging off Grif's attempts to empty a second tube into the wound. "We caught your assassin for you, Blue!"

"Well," Carolina says, and tightens her grip on the guy. He's struggling against her, but it's a weak effort. "You were arguing and being so annoying that he decided to take a potshot at you. And I happened to be passing by and caught him while he was distracted."

"Yeah, like he said," Grif says, "We caught your guy."

Simmons waves his weapon, a little wildly. "So what do we do with him now?"

Carolina looks at Tucker. "What do you say? If I help you with this guy, are you gonna help me break your friend out of that memory unit?"

"Uh," says Tucker. He's staring at the guy caught in Carolina's headlock. Their wannabe assassin is skinny, his armor ill-fitting, like it's not made for him, which is really fucking weird. There's a gross rust-colored stain across the chest—like, these things are pretty washable, but that looks a lot like blood just sort of... caked in. "Yeah," he says. "I guess?"

"Deal," Carolina says, and just straight-up fucking snaps the guy's neck.

"What the _fuck_!" Simmons shrieks, and Grif backpedals into a tree, and even Sarge reels back.

Tucker just sort of watches the limp body hit the ground. The casual brutality, the _efficiency_, shouldn't have surprised him, not really. "You didn't have to do that," he says, but the words sound unconvincing.

"He was going to kill you," Carolina says, not defensively, just as a statement of fact. "He would've killed Wash, and the red guy over there. I've seen it before. Some kid gets revenge on the brain, picks an easy target, and shreds himself to pieces trying to find closure. Trust me, this guy was dead long before he came here. We have more important things to do."

Tucker watches her, wondering if she hears the words coming out of her own fucking mouth. He says, "I wanted to know-" and then stops, because what the fuck did he want to know? Really? She's right. The guy came here to kill him. The guy damn near killed Wash. And, like, Sarge is a weird dude with some messed-up priorities, but it would kind of fucking suck if he'd killed Sarge as well.

Yeah. Sure. And maybe it's all a whole lot easier to digest when it means not having to face up to the fact that someone who hated him enough to kill him might've had a good reason for that. Like, maybe you've got a big brother with some shiny fucking armor who goes out and gets himself killed by an eight-foot-tall alien killing machine. And maybe peacetime negotiations with a human dude and his alien kid taste a little fucking sour. Maybe you put on your brother's old armor and go get a little revenge on the easy fucking target.

"Hey," Carolina says. He fools himself into thinking her voice has gone a little softer. "Look, he could've just been some merc hired by some crazy anti-alien fringe group to kill you."

"Maybe he didn't like the color of your armor," Simmons supplies, helpfully.

Tucker can't look away from the body. And, like, he's killed people before. He's fucking stabbed people and shot them and in one panicked case may have crushed someone with a refrigerator. He's just... he gets the feeling there's a new responsibility, here, something unwritten, something between the lines. And responsibility fucking sucks.

Caboose and Wash are beside him now—when the fuck did they get here?—and Caboose actually pats him on the shoulder. "He was a bad person," Caboose says.

For some fucking reason it's Wash's face his eyes finally settle on. Wash, who's shaky and leaning a little on Caboose for support. Wash, whose jaw is set and gaze is cold. Wash, who's looking at Carolina like she's a fucking lifeline. Wash, who's just another fucking soldier again, waiting to follow orders.

"Yeah," Tucker says. He's so fucking _tired_. "Yeah, buddy. He was a bad person."


	5. Chapter 5

Grif and Simmons quietly take care of the dead guy's body. Tucker's never been so fucking grateful to Red Team in his life.

Carolina and Wash are deep in discussion about their first target—apparently they're all gonna be attacking a motherfucking military depot or something, jesus fuck—and Caboose is having a cheerful and utterly nonsensical conversation with Sarge, so Tucker just sort of ignores all of them and flops down on the ground, letting his head rest back against the dirt, and stares up at what he can see of the blue sky beyond the tree branches overhead. His HUD is telling him ambient temperatures are rising. His HUD is telling him his heart is beating at 140% its normal rate. His HUD is helpfully painting targets.

His helmet feels claustrophobic all of a sudden, so he tugs it off, lets it roll to a stop wherever the fuck it lands. And then it's like, fuck it, nobody's trying to shoot at him right now, might as well take off the armor. He feels kinda stupid rolling awkwardly around in the middle of a forest, trying to strip down to his Kevlar undersuit. He feels even stupider once he pulls off his boots and just lies back down. Like, kinda naked, but not in a fun way.

His head's spinning. His wrist hurts. He feels sick.

It takes him a second to realize Wash is standing over him. He still looks pretty bad, but Tucker's almost sure that's just because he's still out of armor, too. Some dudes just don't look right out of armor, y'know? Like it's a part of them. Like it grew on them, or they grew into it. Tucker kinda hopes he still looks normal without the armor. It'd suck to have to wear it all the time, after this is over.

Wash's brow furrows. "You okay?"

"Fuck you," Tucker says, but he says it lazily, like a sigh.

Wash shrugs, and, after a moment, sits down next to Tucker. He moves slowly, stiffly, one arm clenched tight to his chest, but he actually puts in the effort to fuckin' sit down in the dirt next to him. Tucker's weirdly touched by the gesture. Way the fuck more touched when Wash doesn't say anything, just painstakingly draws his knees up to his chest and sort of sits there with his fucking heroic thousand-yard stare.

"How the head?" Tucker asks, eventually, just to have something to say.

Wash shrugs again. There's a hint of a smile in his voice. "Getting better."

Tucker rubs at his face with the back of his hand. The sun in his eyes is too bright, and he turns a squint into a sneer. "Must be nice to have someone telling you what to do again."

"A little," Wash says, apparently choosing to ignore his tone. "Carolina made some bad calls, but we were her team. I trust her as much as I trust anyone."

"So not at all, is what you're saying."

"I trust some people," Wash says, simply.

Tucker snorts. "Probably a bad idea."

"Yeah. Probably."

They're quiet a while longer. Tucker sits up, digging his fingers into the sparse grass, pulling it out of the dirt in clumps.

"It's the Director," Wash says. "The guy who ran Project Freelancer. Carolina thinks Epsilon can help us track him down. He's got the memories."

Tucker lets the loose strands of grass fall from his hands, picked up by a breeze. "She gonna snap his neck when she finds him, too?"

"Something like that."

And that's pretty much all Tucker can take of fuckin' Freelancer bullshit, so he blows out an annoyed breath and flops back onto the ground. "You guys ever get sick of using people? Like, that's all we ever are to you. Tools. You're Carolina's tool, I'm your tool. Fuck. I miss being a person, you know?"

Wash is quiet for a long while, long enough that Tucker half-expects him to have, like, fallen asleep or something. But when he looks back, the guy's got a weirdly tense expression on his face, like he's trying to hold something in. "Uh," he says, in a choked voice. "You're my _tool_?"

Tucker really, really doesn't want to say it, because he's so fucking tired, but... okay, yeah, fuck it. "Bow chicka bow-wow," he mutters, all in one breath, and then Wash lets out a little startled snicker that's almost a giggle, and that's all it takes to set Tucker off, and holy _fuck_ has it ever been a long time since he just laughed like this.

By the time Tucker gets himself back under control, Wash is on his feet again, holding out a hand to help him up. "C'mon," he says. "We should be able to break out the MREs now that Carolina's navigating our way out of here. Those things are going to taste amazing after the rat bars." And, like, it's a nice gesture, but Tucker's pretty sure Wash is gonna collapse if he tries to take any of Tucker's weight, so he just sort of awkwardly gets to his feet on his own.

"Hey," he says. "You really want revenge on this Director dude, huh? I mean, he fucked you up pretty bad."

Wash shrugs. "I don't know. Maybe I'll figure it out when I see him. Mostly I just want this all to be over, and this is probably the only way that's gonna happen. Carolina doesn't leave a job half-finished. Neither do I."

Tucker squints at him suspiciously, but the dude has a pretty great poker face, and it's hard to tell if the innuendo was on purpose. Wash raises an eyebrow, but doesn't say a damn word. Huh. "Yeah," Tucker says. "I'm ready for all this to be done, too. Just make sure you don't burn us all out chasing ghosts, y'know?"

"I know," Wash says. "I'm on your side, Tucker. Trust me."

Tucker rolls his eyes, moving over to dig through their supplies for that sweet, sweet mac-and-cheese MRE. Seriously, they put like a ton of sugar in that shit for some reason. Fuck knows why. "'Cause you're our valiant self-destructive leader-by-default?"

"Something like that." Wash pauses, rubbing at the bandages on his chest. "I guess you'll be getting Church back after all this, huh?"

Tucker pauses, then resumes his foraging. "I mean, yeah, I guess. If Carolina does her thing. So that'll be good."

"Yeah." Wash drags the silence out into something really uncomfortable while Tucker digs past the spare ammo down to the optimistically titled 'meals'. "Hey," Wash says, after a moment. "I knew Church. I mean, the Alpha. The first Church you knew back in the canyon. He implanted in me for a short time. He's a good guy."

"Nah," Tucker says. "He's an asshole. Selfish dick all the way." He shrugs. "I miss him."

"I'm sorry," Wash says, softly, and Tucker's not sure what he means. Sorry Alpha-Church is dead? Sorry he's been walking around in what amounts to a dead man's armor?

He's not wearing that armor now. "Don't be sorry," Tucker says. "Not your fuckin' fault." And the words come out way too earnest, so he covers the awkwardness by plunging his hands into the supplies and dragging out the first box he grabs. "Hey, where the fuck is Carolina, anyway?"

Wash shrugs, pulling out his own meal. "She was gonna go make sure the Reds were on board, which I took to mean she's gonna go scare them into being on board."

"Yeah, well, if she just asks they'll probably say yes. Or if she offers to, like, maim Grif. They'll be on board for that."

"She'll figure it out."

Wash cracks the heatpack in his meal, Tucker does the same, and for a few moments they just watch the steam rise. Tucker feels a bit like a normal guy for the first time in a really, really long while. Just a normal guy with a dead-computer best friend and an alien son and a fucked-up CO with a deathwish who's kind of okay once you get to know him. Yeah.

"Almost done," Wash says. His voice has gone soft again, but it's not especially melodramatic this time around. Just quiet. Tired. "One last push." He balances the tray of food on a fallen log and starts pulling on his armor again, easing the chestplate over his bloodied bandages, fastening the greaves, slipping back into the boots. Blood Gulch blue. Freelancer accents.

Tucker thinks about the things people do when they're following orders. The things people become.

"Yeah," he says. Suddenly he doesn't have much of an appetite anymore. "One last push."


End file.
